More than 50,000 families have been silently shipped out of London boroughs in the past three years, an investigation by The Independent can reveal.

Leaked documents obtained by this newspaper expose the true scale of the “social cleansing” taking place across the capital as a result of welfare cuts and soaring rents. The figures show an unprecedented number of families who cannot afford to find homes in their local area being uprooted from their neighbourhoods and dumped further and further away from the capital, cut off from their relatives and support networks.

The spike coincides with the Coalition’s introduction of the benefit cap and “bedroom tax”, both of which have made it significantly harder for poor people to afford housing in London. In 2010, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, vowed that the controversial welfare reforms would not lead to “Kosovo-style social cleansing”, pledging: “You are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have been living.”

Muslim votes could determine the outcome in up to a quarter of electoral seats as their numbers have increased substantially since the 2010 general election, according to the right-wing Henry Jackson Society (HJS).

HJS argue in a new study, ‘Religious Diversity in British Parliamentary Constituencies’, the Muslim vote could also dictate who wins in around half of the UK’s 193 marginal seats.The study claims to be the first to provide a religious breakdown of electoral constituencies and carefully avoids claiming that British Muslims block vote en masse.

Visa and MasterCard payment cards issued by Russian banks are working again in Crimea after transactions have been transferred to the new Russian National Payment Card System.

Cash withdrawals by Visa and MasterCard holders will be possible through ATMs belonging to the region’s largest bank the Russian National Commercial Bank (RNCB), TASS reported on Wednesday. Russian domestic transactions using Visa and MasterCard were transferred to processing through Russia’s newly created National Payment Card System (NPCS) on April 1. The system has been started to ensure the continued operation of Visa and MasterCard after the two companies refused to work with a number of Russian banks due to Western sanctions last year.

A Twitter account with over 8,000 followers actively engaged in recruiting new people for the Islamic State group and transporting them to Syria may have been operated by a twenty-something girl from Seattle, Channel 4 reported.

The British news network investigated the @_UmmWaqqas account, which had been promoting the cause of the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS/ISIL) until it was shut down on April 17. The woman behind the account is believed to be European or particularly British due to the contacts she maintained with many IS recruits, who went to the Middle East to join the extremist group.

But the channel, which studied several years of the account’s history, reported that it identified seven pictures posted in the past to locations in Seattle, Washington. The report says the woman’s name is likely Rawdah Abdisalaam, citing a connection with a Facebook account in that name that uses similar images and previous names of the same Twitter account.

Virginia police unsuccessfully attempted to delete evidence of their assault on an unarmed teenager during a traffic stop for a broken license plate light. Video of the incident, taken by the car's driver, was recovered despite police efforts.

In January, Courtney Griffith, 18, was pulled over in Virginia Beach, Virginia for the defective light. Soon after being pulled over, she activated a camera just behind the steering wheel on her vehicle's dashboard.

The United States must ramp up its ability to defer and defeat cyberattacks, security experts and federal prosecutors agree, as foreign hackers target American networks with increasing scope and sophistication.

With security breaches being suffered by US-based corporations on a regular basis, panelists at a summit in Washington, DC this week sounded an alarm for firms to adopt aggressive yet defensive cyber policies – lest they want to risk becoming this year's Target, Home Depot or, most unfortunately, Sony Pictures Entertainment.

At the International Conference on Cyber Engagement at Georgetown University, two of the federal government's top attorneys urged private businesses to forge relationships with law enforcement in order to minimize in advance their response to a hypothetical – but increasingly possible – cyberattack.

Maryland governor Larry Hogan has declared a state of emergency in Baltimore as standoff between large group of youth and police in riot gear engulfed much of the city. The National Guard has been activated to address the growing violence.Protesters and police converged on Mondawmin Mall in northwest Baltimore early Monday afternoon. People began throwing bottles, rocks and bricks, as demonstrations spread to other areas of the city. Several police officers have been injured by the projectiles, and protesters ‒ teens later joined by adult residents ‒ refused to listen to law enforcement and disperse.

Clashes between police and protesters erupt after Freddie Gray funeral

A large group of youth and police in riot gear clashed near a Baltimore, Maryland shopping mall hours after the city’s mayor called for peace. The University of Maryland Baltimore shut down its campus, citing activities with the potential for violence.

Mondawmin Mall in northwest Baltimore closed early Monday afternoon, as protesters and police converged on the area. The youth are throwing rocks and other items, WBAL reported.

The Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan has held a snap presidential election, with a voter turnout of over 95 percent and little opposition to incumbent leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, in power since 1991. 95.11 percent of voters had cast their ballots by day's end, according to the electoral committee. Observers at the polling stations, including international ones, reported no significant violations. Overall, 858 observers from 19 countries were present.

After reading that Vatican has rejected the French Ambassador's accreditation because of his homosexuality, I have followed the cases of transgender American children, and finally the case of Bruce Jenner, having wondering if indeed the theory of error of Mother Nature is valid or not. With the latest technology and the latest technological studies, in which seems exists the obsessive compulsive disorder to have in the immediacy a robot that be equal to the androids of Blades Runner to meet human demands, we are getting closer and closer to the reality of science fiction films in the past years. Nowadays, there are more thrills to the birth of a child, it is sensible now the time to let him use a smartphone just out of the womb, rather than sing him a lullaby. But what